lesamy – Page 13 – Only Mostly Dead

Lesamy – Week One Results

First week of the new regime over, more importantly first weigh-in. In time honoured fashion I’ll keep you waiting for the result, first some thoughts on what kind of a week it’s been and what I’ve learnt.

Hey this is easy!

Okay, don’t laugh, but in the first couple of days I really thought it wasn’t going to be that hard. Of course almost anything is easy for a couple of days (except maybe holding your breath). I think the fact that I was eating what I’d normally eat, just sticking to meal times and a calorie “budget” made it feel like not that big a change. Of course the effect is (and needs to be) culmative. The later in the week the harder it got. And by hard I don’t really mean that I felt hungry. There were a couple of times when I felt my stomach nagging me but as much as anything that’s because I tend to eat my tea quite late (9pm sometimes) so that doesn’t really count when I could have easily got up from the computer and gone and made my meal.

So what made it hard?

The Real Meaning of Comfort Eating

It’s funny how you think you know about something when you’ve never really experienced it. I’ve always been the kind of guy to eat what I want more or less when I felt like it. So I’ve always associated “comfort eating” with the kind of thing you see on Friends where they eat a tub of ice-cream when the latest boyfriend dumped them. And whilst there are times when I pig out because I’m fed up it’s not something I do much.

The things is, eating less makes you think about when, how and why you normally eat, and whilst it may not fit my previous definition of “comfort eating” there are definitely a lot of times when I eat because I’m bored, or as a kind of “entertainment” – something to do that gives me pleasure. And it’s this later that’s hardest to give up.

Spreadsheet not Helping?

Last time I spoke about how I made a spreadsheet like I did for my Harry Potter Reading Marathon. I think overall this is a good thing. It’s a motivator to watch my progress and I like numbers (which is why, in the end, calorie-counting, which I hadn’t originally intended to do, works for me rather than against me.) However since the parallel was there this automatically made me think about the Harry Potter experience.

I got a tremendous sense of satisfaction out of achieving something that I wasn’t sure if I could do. I did so by keeping an eye on the target, via the spreadsheet, but towards the end there was something of a sense of grim determination about it. In order to make my ridiculous targets I was eating, sleeping, working and reading, and that’s all. I longed to just flop in front of the TV and watch a film but usually couldn’t spare the time away from the books (I still enjoyed them by the way, just not the reading itself, if that makes any sense). Once I’d finished I don’t think I picked up a book of any kind for several months.

So apply this by analogy to my dieting – what I don’t want to do is work hard for a few weeks or months, make some progress, hit my target and then be so fed up that I go back to eating too much and put it all back on, and to some extent the spreadsheet symbolises that. Whatever I do, whatever changes I’m making, have to be sustainable indefinitely.

Soooooo…. back to the “entertainment eating” thing, giving up of. When I’m sitting down at the end of the day thinking I really fancy something, not am hungry, or even fed up or bored, just really fancy eating something, the following train of thought goes through my mind:

“I really fancy something to eat. Not much, maybe a slice of toast, or one of those yoghurt bars.”

“but a slice of toast is 85 calories and the yoghurt bar is 70 and you’ve only got 50 left”

“so? I’m only going over by a few”

“it’s week 1 and you’re cheating already!”

“good point. Oh well think about the target, I’m weighing myself tomorrow. Once I hit the target…”

“Sure but it’s not about just hit-the-target-and-quit, this is your life now – or it’ll not work”

“Oh. So from now on I can’t just eat a slice of toast (never mind chocolate etc) when I fancy it? That’s my life? Thinking twice over a frikking slice of toast?!”

“Pretty much. But it’s only food. Is your life so empty that giving up comfort eating is such a terrible thing?”

(sadly) “yes. maybe?”

We’re not in Hogwarts Anymore Harry

This is all pretty downbeat but I think there’s room for optimism. I think that there are a number of reasons why it doesn’t have to be like the Harry Potter thing:

My goal is much more realistic. The Harry Potter marathon was the equivalent of a crash diet adn I’m not doing that.
It’ll get easier as I get used to it.
The hard part is psychological. As I said I don’t really get physical hunger pangs.
I’m starting to exercise. As I get fitter I’ll be able to do more i.e. burn more calories, which means I won’t necessarily be on 1800 calories a day forever.
Over the next X months I’ll be aiming to burn more calories than I eat in order to lose weight. Once I hit my target weight, I can find a balance between diet and exercise that allows me to maintain that weight.

So I’m not as pessimistic as the previous section makes it sound. In any case, it’s a helpful thing to have to re-consider the place of food in my life. It reminds me a bit of fasting when I used to do that (for religious reasons)

And the Magic Number is…

OK, I’ve rambled long enough. In the first week on my new diet/exercise regime I have lost 2.1Kg or 4.6lbs. More than I thought but not too much. It is the first week and I know that you always lose most in the initial stages so I’m not expecting to keep up that rate of loss.

But I’m pleased.

So what is it?

Ok. Basically I’ve decided to try to lose some weight. I have pretty much always been overweight and not minded much. As long as my general health and fitness was ok I didn’t feel inclined to go chasing a particular body image. However lately I’ve noticed I’m not as fit as I was. So I started to think about upping the amount of regular exercise I get.

This led to me deciding, this last saturday, to do specific exercises every day and increase the amount of walking I do. I did this for a couple of days and started to wonder if I’d feel the effect in terms of my waistline and so thought I’d weigh myself. Which led to the discovery that my scales are bust. Which led to the purchase of a new set. Which led me to thinking more about weight than fitness per se.

The Harry Potter Effect

One of the things that occurred to me as soon as I thought about weighing myself was to set up a spreadsheet. Some readers will remember my Harry Potter read-all-the-books marathon of last year, in which my use of a spreadsheet was both a kind of helpful distraction and motivator. Silly but true. So I set up a spreadsheet to record my weight. And really, only because it gave me another formula to plug in I added a column for BMI (Body Mass Index).

That was perhaps a mistake.I knew I was overweight. I thought I was probably “technically” obese. But the number I cam up with seems to be in the “Are you sure you’re not dead yet?” category. Oh well. In the end it’s just a number. I would have liked to make a goal of getting into the overweight category but since that would probably involve somehow stretching to 3m tall I don’t think that’s realistic.

The Sensible Approach

Looking up the formula for BMI did help me in one way though. It led me to some useful, reputable, websites with sensible advice. The Harry Potter marathon was the reading equivalent of a crash diet and I think I was already aware that I need to go for slow and steady if I want to keep the weight off, so reading just that along with some reasonable goals and advice was actually encouraging. So based on what I read I’ve come up with the following:

I’m doing a few minutes worth of exercise morning and evening. I intend to start slow and build up, so maybe in 3-4 weeks I’ll increase the number/duration of that.

I’m cutting out snacks and having just the two meals a day that I theoretically already have – lunch and evening meal.

I plan to add breakfast in at some point but it’s never been a major meal for me and I don’t want to change too much all in one go so I’m leaving that one until later.

I’ll aim for ~1800 calories a day most days with the occasional (no more than weekly) cheat day of 2300.

I’ll expect the progress to be slow, aiming at no more than about 1-2lbs or 1kg loss a week.

I’ll only weigh myself once a week (and more and you get discouraged with progress or frustrated by fluctuations)

I’ll expect the occasional set back but won’t be phased, will carry on, and will seek support and encouragement.

My goal initially will be a 10% reduction. Doing this by Christmas is achievable.

Having just followed this full regime for a day or two it’s not so hard that I can’t see myself carrying it on – potentially indefinitely as I want to keep the weight off. 1800 calories is a lot less than I was having but with a slightly smaller lunch I can still have what I consider to be a perfectly reasonable evening meal, with a nice desert. I just can’t have all the extra snacks. I have to choose between the nice yoghurt, the ice cream and the chocolate and just have one of those and not all three.

In a word it’s doable.

My Mean Mother’s Method

I said above that I’ve been ok with being overweight in the past so long as I’m generally healthy. However one person in my life wasn’t and that was my mother. She means well but it comes across as nagging. Recently I got home to find an envelope addressed in her handwriting. There was no note or letter, just a clipping from her local newspaper about a guy who’d lost some amazing amount of weight and his secret apparently was getting support through his blog. I just thought “not too subtle mam” and figured she’d thought of me because she associates me with all things computery. And fatness obviously.

A few weeks later having independantly decided to do this one of the things recommended in my reading was to get moral support. There’s no way I’d join a slimming club. I’m just not that much of a joiner plus I knew a guy who did weight-watchers and they were very civil to him but being the only bloke made it a bit uncomfortable. Best case scenario I think you’d be treated as a rare and special specimen and worst case you’d be seen as invading their safe female-only space. Besides it costs money. Bugger that.

So the blog it is.

Hence this.

Hence Lesamy.